Diaclone

A series of Japanesetoys from the 1970s, which were vehicles that transformed into robots. They were driven by little figures less than an inch tall. If this idea sounds a little familiar, it's because many of these toys were released as Transformers in the United States in 1980 - most of the original Transformers cars and jets were from Diaclone, as were the Dinobots and Insecticons. Since the Transformers were sentient robot characters, the drivers weren't released with the U.S. toys.

The drivers pretty much looked like humans in powered armor, and could rotate each leg up to 90 degrees forward or backwards at the hips (to sit in the vehicles) and could rotate their arms 360 degrees around the shoulder. They had magnets in their feet so they could grab onto the outside of the die-cast metal parts of their vehicle/robots. The foot-magnet idea was later ripped off by the StarCom toys.